Foreclosures are all the rage in the media these days. If you were to believe the television and the radio, someone could buy a foreclosure, move into it without any major work and have thousands of dollars of instant equity.

While most of us know there is more to the story, sometimes you can actually find that needle in the haystack. This week’s Great Durham Starter Home might just be that needle.

Front View of 3612 Abercromby

Our starter home this week is in the Abercromby section of the Villages of Cornwallis. The Villages of Cornwallis is a development with a mix of condos, townhomes, duplexes and single-family homes near the intersection of NC-55 and Cornwallis Road in Southwest Durham. That puts you just minutes away from Southpoint Mall, RTP and NC Central. downtown Durham and Chapel Hill are both a short trip away.

This home offers 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and almost 1600 square feet of space in an established community. It has a tremendous amount of light in almost every room and has the potential to be a really memorable home with the right owner. It is a foreclosure, owned by HUD, but to my untrained eye, it appears to need little other than new carpets, paint and some appliances.

HUD is offering this property at $102,400. At that price, it would make a great personal residence, and also has some potential as an investment property. for more details on this property, click here. To arrange a showing, please email me, and we will arrange a time.

Don’t forget, the $8,000 tax credit expires on December 1! Time is running out on this great opportunity to buy your first home.

[Disclaimer: I am not a home inspector and none of the above should be taken as a guarantee of condition. I would encourage any buyer, foreclosure or not, to have their home inspected before making the purchase]

The Herald Sun reported today that a proposed high school will not be built on the Erwin-Cornwallis site the DPS has been investigating. apparently the grading requirements and the required creek buffers made the site unsuitable for the amount of development required for a high school. The DPS staff says they are still looking at three other sites for the new high school, but would not give any information about their location.

Pin Oak Dr - Front View

For this week’s starter home, we’re moving to the Five Oaks development on Old Chapel Hill Road. This two bedroom, two bath townhome is convenient to Chapel Hill, the South Square area and Interstate 40 and just a few minutes more to downtown Durham and Southpoint. The vaulted ceilings in the living room make the space seem even larger than its 1180 square feet.

Also, as part of the Five Oaks community, you would have one of the better clubhouse facilities available. The Five Oaks pool club has its own swim team as well as excellent tennis courts and a fitness room.

For more details on this listing, which is currently offered for sale at $137,000, click here. If you are interested in looking at this home, please email me and we will arrange a showing. The clock is ticking on the $8,000 tax credit, so don’t delay!

As a small part of the Stimulus package, Congress passed the “Mortgage Disclosure Improvement Act.” This act, which took effect of July 30, attempted to ensure that buyers went into their closings with all the [correct] information. The main provisions of the Act are

• A borrower must receive a Good Faith Estimate [GFE] and a Truth in Lending [TIL] disclosure within three days of submitting a mortgage application. [This was already required, but is reinforced by the Act]
• The borrower must have at least seven days to review the GFE and TIL disclosures. This can not be waived by the buyer.
• If the terms of the loan change, or the loan APR increases by more than 0.125% [one-eighth of a percent], the buyer has to receive a new GFE and TIL disclosure. The buyer than receives three days to review the new documents. The buyer can not waive this period, so if the change is made the day before closing, the closing is delayed.

All of this is supposed to prevent buyers from arriving at the closing table to discover the terms and expenses of their mortgage are not what the buyers thought they were. That is a admirable goal. What it will also do, however, is slow down the application process. Think about it — under the new system, lenders are going to want to be absolutely certain of all the numbers 72 hours prior to closing. Otherwise, the closing ends up delayed and everyone is unhappy [and they blame it on the lender, which makes it doubly bad].

The mortgage pros I’ve spoken to have said that buyers should assume the application process under the new system will take 45 days, where it used to take around 30. If you are a first time home buyer trying to get closing done before the tax credit goes away [on November 30], that’s another 15 days you need to build into your schedule. Don’t wait until the last minute. Email me today, and we’ll get started finding that first home for you.

Today’s Herald-Sun had the results of last years Performance composite scores. congratualtions to the following schools, which were cited as “Schools of Distinction”

• Little River Elementary
• Mangum Elementary
• Pearsontown Elementary
• Middle College High School at Durham Tech

This award is a reflection of a lot of hard work by both students and faculty. Congratulations!

For more details about the results for all Durham schools, click here.

With the deadline for the $8,000 tax credit fast approaching, I wanted to launch a semi-regular series highlighting some of the great starter homes available in the current market. hopefully, this will be a weekly post until the credit expires on December 1. Needless to say, if you want to take advantage of the credit email me today. You know how these things are — December 1st will be here before you know it.

The first home is our series is in Woodcroft, so it has the best of both worlds. Just minutes from Southpoint Mall, RTP, Duke and UNC, but still far enough away to be your secluded refuge. With beautiful hardwood floors on the first floor, this would be a great home to show off to your friends. With two bedrooms and a large bonus room that could be used as a third, this home even has some room to grow with a growing family.

Offered at $153,000, this home is a great gateway into home ownership. To see more details about the property, click here. to arrange a private showing, please email me.

Last month’s housing data showed a strong increase in the health of the
Durham housing market. Will the numbers for June hang on to those gains? Let’s
take a look.

For all of Durham County there were 1994 houses listed at the end of June. 288
sales closed in June, so at that pace the currently available inventory would be
sold in 6.9 months. This is an small downtick from June’s adsorption tare of 6.2 months. It is still, however, a very strong showing for the county for the second month in a row.

For the 27713 area code there were 400 homes listed at the end of
June. 83 homes sold during June, so the current listings would be sold through
in 4.8 months. This is again a small softening of the market — last month’s number was 3.95 months — but again puts our little corner of Durham strongly in the realm of a seller’s market.

It’s worth noting that listings and sales declined this month compared to June. Listings declined slightly less than sales, which is why adsorption rates are slightly higher. Still it is another month of strength for the Durham market.

Let’s take a look at some individual communities

All of these communities still show strength as the overall housing market recovers.

I will get to the monthly housing stats in a [hopefully] few moments, but I wanted to call reader’s attention to this insightful post at Bull City Rising about the possibilities for a new high school. Kevin and Yonah have done an amazing job of analyzing how a new high school could fit in various places in Durham — along Ninth Street, at the current University Ford and at the old Lakewood Shopping Center. They didn’t look at my pet site, University Marketplace, but that is a small omission. Hopefully we can spur some discussion about how Durham can reuse its current buildings before clearing its ever shrinking greenways.